costco tender_square every spot in the lot was taken, with vehicles vulture-circling. it was eleven in the morning on a monday. "how are all these people here?" i cried, watching the masses descend upon the big box. "doesn't anybody work anymore?" mom needed a few items; i decided i'd take her up on bulk toilet paper. i hadn't set foot in the store in almost a decade. it's an overwhelming sensory experience. large shopping carts pushed by every shopper with traffic jams galore. forty-foot steel shelves carrying shrink-wrapped pallets of shit in no apparent order. "i like to go down every aisle," mom said. i groaned in response. luckily, we had bought coffees before we arrived and i had something to sip in the stroll. mom debated a triple pack of sippy cups with cartoon figures that seemed too juvenile for her grand-kids and only set them down after balking at the price. she held up a pair of orange yoga pants and stretched the waistband excitedly. "i have too many of these already," she said, and placed the garment back on the open market table. the smell of frozen fish punched our noses and i exclaimed when i saw a tube of sausage thicker and longer than my leg. "i never look at the meat," she said. i wish she had warned me sooner. in the coffee canister aisle, i saw a man whose job i took fifteen years ago. we both have darker hair now. he didn't see me. he walked away with a full cart muttering to himself. i ended up with more than butt-wiping paper. "if you see something you like and you don't get it, it'll be gone next time," mom said. i found a large plastic utility shelf for my cellar. i decided to finally indulge in fabric softener when i've never used it. and i found sarah polley's book of essays in the paperbacks. mom didn't find the metamucil gummies she was hoping to get for dad. but she filled the cart with a bottle of generic allergy pills, a trio of nylon bones for ruby, a box of kitty litter that terri wanted, and a collapsible crate for the garage. shoppers bottlenecked at the exit while workers in red vests studied sale receipts and cart contents before releasing us into the spring sun. 230320 ... ovenbird My shoes gave out in the Costco parking lot. Both of them at once. This is because demonic forces are at work at Costco and the ones presiding over the parking lot grow tired of causing parking related collisions and try to get creative sometimes. Today they decided that dissolving the last of the rubber protecting me from the road would be fun. Which is how I ended up with water pouring into both of my shoes resulting in soaked socks before I even reached the door. I followed the zombie hordes inside and then dutifully pushed my cart up and down the aisles adding items in quantities too large to be believed (a litre and a half of conditioner purchased for the sole purpose of facilitating the ongoing lice combing I have to do on my children’s hair, a five pack of after eight mints because Christmas requires them, new pillows for my holiday guests, enough toilet bowl cleaner to last the rest of my life). Half way through my shopping trip I was starving. I made the critical error of not having a proper breakfast first and was forced to subsist on the proffered samples and so I found myself ravenously eating a rolled up piece of deli ham while standing next to a tower of maple syrup that could instantly kill me if it tipped over. I felt like a scavenger. A rat, or a racoon maybe, eating my pilfered snack and then scuttling away to the clothing section where I tore open a package of pyjamas like a proper old lady to see if they were the right size. (They were and I doubled down on my senior citizen behaviour by leaving the ripped open one there and taking a properly packaged set instead.) I practiced extreme self restraint in not buying a lifetime’s supply of chocolate peppermint bark and also resisted a two pound panettone. Then it was back to the parking lot where I squelched to my car, collapsed into the front seat, and surprised myself by finding that I was near tears. I don’t want to be responsible for Christmas. I want to be little again. I want to feel that buzzing bumblebee flutter of anticipation in my chest. I want to remember what wonder feels like. You can’t get wonder at Costco. Believe me, I’ve looked. 251208 what's it to you? who go blather from